Posts Tagged ‘Microinverters’

Enphase Innovating into Obsolescence

Thursday, May 17th, 2012

We like the microinverter for residential solar panel systems and we respect Enphase’s market leadership. Just as the elevator was synonymous with the lift and Xerox was synonymous with photocopiers, Enphase has become synonymous with microinverters. Most of the residential installations of solar panels we see are with microinverters. As Enphase has extended its warranty, the microinverter has become an integral part of home solar panel systems. All of that is well and good, but we are wondering if Enphase is innovating into obsolescence by treating its microinverters as electronics, fundamentally changing its product every few months. We like the Enphase microinverter, but wish that they would spend less time on innovation and more time on improving its current products.

Enphase Microinverter Warranty Claim Causes Heartburn

Monday, March 21st, 2011

We should say right up front that we generally have a bias in favor of microinverters. Most of the solar energy systems that we sell at SolarTown are sold with microinverters rather than central inverters. We have explained in our learning article explaining inverters and micro inverters why generally we favor microinverters in the residential solar market. Our recommendation, however, may be tempered by our recent experience dealing with customer care of the leading microinverter manufacturer, Enphase. Microinverters have quickly garnered acceptance especially for solar installations on homes. Although we expect some major competition starting this year, Enphase is undoubtedly the leader of this fast expanding market, and as of this writing, is the only microinverter we carry at SolarTown. We may have not been as sensitive to the reliability issue of microinverters, or particularly the Enphase microinverter, until one of the Enphase parts failed on one of our customer’s installations. The part that failed was the Enphase Envoy, which is, according to Enphase, the “communications gateway” for the solar energy system. It basically monitors the performance of the system.